Slurp!

We took the kids ice skating tonight at the outdoor rink in Midway (about 10 minutes away). We had a really fun time, although my back and arms are SORE from bending over to help Carinne for such a long time! Some of the kids protested before we went, lamenting that ice skating would be SOOO boring. But everyone had a fantastic time, and, of course, didn't want to leave to come home!

On our way home, Christian was doing this "slurp, AHHH!" noise in the car, and Camille joked, "Christian's drinking air!" We all giggled, and then she exclaimed, "He's not drinking air; he's drinking the snow off his boot!" I looked back there, and sure enough, the little monkey had pulled off his boot and was sucking the (dirty) snow off the bottom of his boot! Ewwww! What a disturbingly resourceful little guy! I grabbed the boot and we got him a big drink of clean (!) water the moment we got home. Too funny!

The perfect place to stash evidence?

Remember that cute little girl from the post just prior to this one? Well, that same Little Miss Cuteness, who is almost always sweet and perfect, occasionally gets into trouble. She is a kid, after all. Thanks to that doll-faced cherub, I've got another great item to add to my list of yucky household discoveries: today I found a pair of her very damp, peed-in pants and panties in the overflowing laundry basket of clean (well, not anymore!) clothes. Carincess, as we've taken to calling her, had very carefully hidden them under several layers, and everything around them is now infused with the stanky essence of urine. They'd been steeping for over 12 hours, so the odor is not exactly subtle. I'm wondering what my big kids had to grab out of there this morning, since I haven't folded laundry for a few days and their drawers are empty of several necessities, such as socks and underwear....

Well, I guess I have just been sitting around, filing my nails and reading juicy romance novels in the bubble bath, all the while wondering what I could possibly find to do to fill my empty day. Now I get to go rewash 2 days' worth of clothes. Hooray!

A glimpse into Carinne's little world

Carinne just turned 4 on Sunday. As you may know, four-year-olds love to talk. They tell all kinds of stories and make endless observations about the world around them. I love it! Yesterday, a couple of Carinne's observations had me laughing so hard, I just had to write them down.

Let me preface this first story with a little background. My parents had to put down their geriatric dog, Nikki, a few months ago. She had become mean and ornery, but she was a dog, so Carinne automatically adored her. She still misses her and often comments when we're at their house, "Nikki's not here. She died." So yesterday, we were at their house getting Legos for Kenneth's class project, and Carinne found a rectangular rabbit pelt in the closet (not sure where it came from, but I remember using it as a Barbie rug--those were the days before Barbie adopted her current, P.C. anti-fur stance). She hoisted it in the air, and with her eyes wide with excitement, exclaimed, "Mommy! Look! A PIECE OF NIKKI!!!" She was so excited my parents had kept a memento!

The second story takes place a little later, when I took her to the doctor for her annual check-up. Our doctor's office is upstairs from a physical therapy office. As we came down the stairs, she saw a wheelchair parked next to the P.T. office. She went to examine it and said, "Mommy, what's this? Is this for the lazy people?" I kind of chuckled and thought that was kind of a strange way to think about wheelchair-bound people. I was glad for this little teaching moment, and explained that people who use wheelchairs aren't lazy, but maybe their legs don't work very well. That night I was telling Devin about what she'd said, and he wondered, "Is it because she's been watching WALL-E?" Maybe I was overly tired and more than a little slap-happy, but I started laughing so hard I cried and had to run to the bathroom (5 pregnancies haven't exactly strengthened my bladder). If you haven't seen WALL-E yet, it takes place in the future on a starship where all the people are obese because they no longer walk--they just ride around in these hoverchairs, which look a lot like--you guessed it--wheelchairs! I'm sure this image completely overshadows what I told her in our tender little teaching moment, and wheelchairs will continue to represent morbidly obese, lazy people for quite a while in her little brain.

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*Just as a side note: I was sitting with a group of young-ish (around my age--I'm still young-ish, right?) moms at our Relief Society Christmas dinner last night and shared these stories. I knew they were an I-guess-you-had-to-be-there kind of story, but, for some reason, I could NOT for the life of me even get to the punch line because I was laughing so hard. I was gasping for air and just hopelessly hysterical. I'm sure all those poor ladies thought I was high on something, and at a church function, no less! What the Helsinki? What makes a person laugh like a mental patient at something so mildly amusing? I'm a little embarrassed. I think sleep deprivation is really getting to me...

What's all this cold white stuff?

I'm pretty sure Christian doesn't remember snow from last year (actually, last year's snow didn't melt away till about 4-5 months ago). We got about 6 inches during the night, and when he saw it from the window, he just had to go check it out:

Poor little guy! What kind of mother lets her kid walk outside barefoot in the snow?!?!

Here he is after we got some boots and a coat on:

I think it's so cute how intrigued he was with all that snow on the ground! He was totally fascinated!

Items found behind the washer today

Retrieved:

1 boy's undershirt

1 pair boxer briefs

1 sock

1 pair boy's briefs

1 pair boy's shorts

Retrieval methods attempted:

Mop handle

Mop head

Hanger

Hand (while lying on stomach)

Hand (while lying on side)

And finally, leg dangled into abyss behind washer with toes used as pincers. Success!

Amount of time elapsed during this exercise:

20 minutes (which I will never get back)

Items still remaining behind washer which will undoubtedly remain there until the day we move:

2 owner's manuals

1 dryer sheet

1 fabric softener bottle lid

3 dust bunnies, which I'm sure will rapidly reproduce, as bunnies will tend to do

Snaggletooth

Quentin had been home from school the other day for at least an hour when I finally caught a glimpse of the inside of his mouth (yes, I'm aware that type of inattentive parenting won't win me any Mother of the Year awards. But, in my defense, the sweet child mumbles and keeps his head down a LOT. So cut me some slack, wouldja?) I grabbed his little head--not by the hair, although it is growing back nicely, thank you for asking--and ordered him to show me his teeth, now! He complied, and that's when I noticed it--a brand-new gap in his top teeth! He pulled his tooth out by himself at school. How cute can a person get!?



I love it when they lose their front teeth on top! What a cute smile! Now I want him to lose the one next to it so he can sing "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

Hide and seek, toddler-style

I've been noticing lately that random household objects have been mysteriously disappearing. It didn't take long for my astute (ha ha) mind to connect this phenomenon with Christian's newfound obsession with "relocating" items to the toilet or garbage. The other day, I went to throw something away, and this is what I saw when the lid opened:

See if you can find all 10 utensils in this photo. You get a bonus for disregarding the 3 very sharp steak knives and not reporting me immediately to Child Protective Services.

I promptly located the little suspect and brought him in for questioning. He caved early in the interrogation, and confessed to the dirty deed. Here he is demonstrating his technique:

Not the face of someone experiencing the least bit of remorse, in my opinion.

At least the cutlery was at the top of the garbage can as opposed to the bottom of the toilet, which is where I found a magnetic dart the day before. Someone (I'm not mentioning names even though I really want to) had peed and THEN told me about the need for retrieval. I was not amused.

Oh, the humanity...

All right, everyone, listen up. I haven't posted in a while. There's just something about having 5 kids home for the summer that puts a major crimp in my blogging-world style. Three of those kids have been back in school for 3 weeks, and yet, here sits my poor blog, abandoned and alone.

And so it may have continued to sit, had not recent incidents in our otherwise placid, uneventful lives nudged me back to the computer keyboard to document a most unfortunate occurrence. Of course, I'm talking about... a haircut! An ugly, defacing haircut, the kind of haircut dreaded by self-respecting mothers and given by and for children! Sometimes other children's heads are the target of the ill-wielded shears, but, more often, calamity falls upon their very own monstrous heads. Such was the case in our home last night. I sincerely apologize to any of our dear neighbors whose windows may have been shattered by my ear-piercing shrieks. Once you've seen the results of my middle son's encounter with the clippers, either here in photos, or up close and personal, you will surely, dear family and friends, confirm the necessity of such deafening screams.

And so, without further explanation, I present to you... Quentin's Reverse Mohawk:

Oh, yes, little clipper monster, hide your face in shame.

Actually, it'd be better if he were ashamed, instead of proud! Because, let me tell you, he was really angry with me when I informed him that I would now have to cut the rest of his hair to match the jagged furrow he'd created. "No, Mom! It'll look DUMB!" Yes, he actually said those words. Add to that my usually reasonable husband, who agreed that this kooky kid should leave his hair the way it was, and you can feel my pain. But, fortunately, my family subscribes to the "When Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" credo, and the kid got a haircut.

We both cried during that memorable haircut, my offspring and I--I at the loss of his shiny locks and disturbing parade of irrepressible mental images (boot camp, concentration camp, neo-Nazi hate rallies...); he at the untimely loss of such a cool 'do. Yes, I repressed his self-expression and imposed on him my version of normal and acceptable, but, come on, wouldn't you have done the same?!?! He's six! Totally incapable of making any decision more important than what to eat for breakfast! Back me up here, people!

And so, this morning, my darling Q-ball (I never thought that nickname would be so aptly suited to him) headed to church looking like this:

Thank goodness hair grows rather quickly (about half an inch a month, according to howstuffworks.com and various other websites I checked out last night), so this episode will be only a(n unpleasant) memory in about 4 weeks....

Say cheese...

I've got lots of candid shots of my kids, but not very many more formal, posed pictures of all of them together. And so, it's time for me to get out the camera, dress all the kids up, pose them somewhere nice and green in the yard, and attempt to take their picture. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but this prospect has me all nervous and just a little scared.

I used to get their picture taken in a studio, but it's gotten to be too much of an ordeal. First, you have to pick a time to go when it's not anyone's nap time, then you have to get them all dressed and make sure they don't soil their clothes, then you have to do their hair all cute and not let them mess it up, and then you have to drive at least 30 minutes away to the nearest studio (that I can afford). Do you know what can happen during those 30 minutes? Well, a lot, apparently. Then, when you finally get into the studio, you have to get all the kids to look at the camera, smile, keep fingers out of their own and each other's facial orifices, and be still--all at the same time. Those poor little photographers are completely wiped out by the end of the session and get a weird, crazed look in their eyes and a whole-body twitch. I'm sure they're seriously rethinking their career choice or thanking heaven above they're only doing this till they graduate from college.

I have a very talented sister-in-law (Sarah, I'm talking about you) who is a great photographer. I've considered asking her to take their picture, but I treasure her too much to risk losing her friendship over this.

And so, I'm left with only one other option: taking their portrait myself. I'm planning on doing it this Sunday after church. That way, they're already dressed and their hair is already done. I'm writing about it now because I need some time to get psyched up for it.

I'll post the results of our photo shoot next week, but for now, please enjoy this lovely photographic progression of shots taken for Father's Day last year.

Selective independence

One frequent struggle I have encountered in my parenting endeavors is children who whine, "But I can't dooooo it!" when asked to accomplish a task around the house. Now, mind you, I'm not asking them to change the oil in the car or re-wire the house.
It's just astounding to me that the following exchange can occur:
Me: "What're you doin'?"
Child: "Oh, just makin' myself a Monte Cristo sandwich with a side salad of mixed greens and fresh crudites."
Me: "That's great! When you're done, how 'bout we go clean up the playroom together?"
Child: "But I can't doooo it!"
Of course, the preceding example is an exaggeration, but only a slight one.
Where's my Michelle Duggar handbook? I need to figure out how that woman gets her kids to do their chores (without yelling, spanking, or threatening bodily harm).

You can't tear the pages out of a blog, can you?

So I've jumped on the blogging bandwagon. I'm not really sure how the blogging world works, and I don't necessarily have anything particularly novel or interesting to say, but I figure maybe this will get me to keep some sort of journal. So even if no one else ever reads anything I write, it's just fine, because at least I can print out the things that I blog about and save them for my posterity. Heaven knows how little this poor, deprived posterity presently has to read from me...

I've never been a diligent journal-keeper, with maybe one exception. When I was about 12 and living in France, I received a little diary (with a lock and key! Like, how totally fresh is that?) as a birthday gift. I wrote regularly in that little book. It was a great record of the friends I had and all the great trips we took all over Europe. Totally worth keeping, right? Well, one of my dear children found this cute, little book, and thought it would be great for his/her own use. The only thing keeping the book from being absolutely, completely perfect was the writing on a few of the pages. "Not really a problem," I imagine this child thinking. "I'll just remove those few pages, and this book will be as good as new!" I'm sure my reaction upon finding the pages--each in about 3-4 pieces (kids don't have the manual dexterity needed to cleanly rip pages out of a book, don'tcha know)--can be justified.

Why, oh why couldn't this beloved child have chosen my other journal, the one from high school, to hijack? The few entries I did make in the journal of my adolescence are embarrassing, hyper-emotional drivel, and the only reason I haven't burned it is the deeply-rooted belief that YOU MUST PRESERVE YOUR HISTORY--all that "turning the hearts of the children to their fathers" business we learn in Sunday School. But, come on, really, do my kids and grandkids really need to read the really bad poetry I composed as an awkward, angst-driven teen? I swear the only time I ever wrote in that journal was when I was oh-so-depressed. Does that melodrama really need to be preserved for generations to come? I think not. Then again, maybe my posterity would be grateful to me for giving them a good laugh ("Great-Granny was kind of a dork, wasn't she?").

So, anyway, I hope I can write at least a few things worth reading. And if I manage that, hopefully none of my kids will figure out how to delete them!